In the production of magnetic-tape cassettes, such as video cassettes, heretofore, two separate types of equipment have been utilized: tape duplication machines and separate cassette loading machines. In terms of duplication, such machines fall into two categories, conventional "real-time" duplication and "high-speed" duplication. With the former, an unrecorded or blank cassette is recorded using either a professional or consumer-type video cassette recorder at a speed no faster than that which would be used to view the tape. With high-speed duplication, on the other hand, a transfer process is used to copy the magnetically encoded pattern from the master directly to the copy tape at speeds much faster than would be used for viewing. Of the high-speed transfer processes available, the anhysteretic and thermo-magnetic processes are the most common.
As for cassette loading, with real-time duplication, the cassettes are loaded before duplication. When high-speed duplication is used, however a separate machine is required to accept copy tape collected on large "pancakes" and to load sections of this tape into blank cassettes. Such machines are capable of detecting the unrecorded spaces between the programs on the bulk reels, and then separating them into individual finished cassettes.
Although there has never been a single machine which performs both high speed duplication and cassette loading, many efficiencies could be realized if these two operations were to be combined, including more efficient material handling, reduced labor and increased ability to accommodate potential order mixes.